Post-normal Science
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Post-normal science (PNS) was developed in the 1990s by
Silvio Funtowicz Silvio O. Funtowicz (born 1946) is a philosopher of science active in the field of science and technology studies. He created the NUSAP, a notational system for characterising uncertainty and quality in quantitative expressions, and together with ...
and
Jerome R. Ravetz Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author (with Silvio Funtowicz) of the NUSAP no ...
.Funtowicz, S. O. and Ravetz, J. R., 1991. "A New Scientific Methodology for Global Environmental Issues", in Costanza, R. (ed.), Ecological Economics: The Science and Management of Sustainability: 137–152. New York: Columbia University Press.Funtowicz, S. O. and Ravetz, J. R., 1992. "Three types of risk assessment and the emergence of postnormal science", in Krimsky, S. and Golding, D. (eds.), Social theories of risk: 251–273. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood. It is a problem-solving strategy appropriate when "facts reuncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent", conditions often present in policy-relevant research. In those situations, PNS recommends suspending temporarily the traditional scientific ideal of truth, concentrating on quality as assessed by internal and extended peer communities. PNS can be considered as complementing the styles of analysis based on risk and cost-benefit analysis prevailing at that time and integrating concepts of a new critical science developed in previous works by the same authors.Funtowicz, S. and Ravetz, J., 1990.
Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy ''Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy'' is a 1990 book by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, in which the authors explain the notational system NUSAP (numeral, unit, spread, assessment, pedigree) and applies it to several examples from t ...
. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Ravetz, J. R., 1971. Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems. Oxford University Press. PNS is not a new scientific method following
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...
and
Bacon Bacon is a type of salt-cured pork made from various cuts, typically the belly or less fatty parts of the back. It is eaten as a side dish (particularly in breakfasts), used as a central ingredient (e.g., the bacon, lettuce, and tomato sand ...
, a new paradigm in the Kuhnian sense, or an attempt to reach a new ‘normal’. It is instead, a set of insights to guide actionable and robust knowledge production for policy decision making and action in challenges like pandemics, ecosystems collapse, biodiversity loss and, in general, sustainability transitions.Funtowicz, S. and Ravetz, J., "Post-normal science", in ''Companion to Environmental Studies'', Edited ByNoel Castree, Mike Hulme, James D. Proctor, 2018, Routledge.Strand, R., "Post-Normal Science", in ''Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics'', Edited By Clive L. Spash, 2017, Routledge.


Context

According to its proponents
Silvio Funtowicz Silvio O. Funtowicz (born 1946) is a philosopher of science active in the field of science and technology studies. He created the NUSAP, a notational system for characterising uncertainty and quality in quantitative expressions, and together with ...
and
Jerome R. Ravetz Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author (with Silvio Funtowicz) of the NUSAP no ...
, the name "post-normal science" echoes the seminal work on modern science by
Thomas Kuhn Thomas Samuel Kuhn (; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American philosopher of science whose 1962 book ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'' was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term '' paradigm ...
.T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press, 1962. For Carrozza PNS can be "framed in terms of a call for the ‘democratization of expertise’", and as a "reaction against long-term trends of ‘scientization’ of politics—the tendency towards assigning to experts a critical role in policymaking while marginalizing laypeople". For Mike Hulme (2007), writing on ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' Climate change seems falls into the category of issues which are best dealt with in the context of PNS and notes that "Disputes in post-normal science focus as often on the process of science - who gets funded, who evaluates quality, who has the ear of policy - as on the facts of science". From the ecological perspective post-normal science can be situated in the context of 'crisis disciplines' – a term coined by the conservation biologist
Michael E. Soulé Michael Ellman Soulé (May 28, 1936 – June 17, 2020) was an American biologist, known for his work in promoting the idea of conservation biology. Soulé was born in San Diego, California, the son of Berenice (Ellman) and Herman Herzoff. His fat ...
to indicate approaches addressing fears, emerging in the seventies, that the world was on the verge of
ecological collapse Ecological collapse refers to a situation where an ecosystem suffers a drastic, possibly permanent, reduction in carrying capacity for all organisms, often resulting in mass extinction. Usually, an ecological collapse is precipitated by a disastro ...
. In this respect Michael Egan defines PNS as a 'survival science'. More recently PNS has been defined as a movement of ‘informed critical resistance, reform and the making of futures’.J. R. Ravetz, "Post-Normal Science Symposium: Address by Jerome Ravetz Reflections on ‘informed critical resistance, reform and the making of futures,’" University of Oxford, Institute for Science, Innovation and Society, 2018. nline Available: https://www.insis.ox.ac.uk/article/post-normal-science-symposium-address-jerome-ravetz Moving from PNS
Ziauddin Sardar Ziauddin Sardar ( ur, ضیاء الدین سردار; born 31 October 1951) is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology and s ...
developed the concept of Postnormal Times (PNT). Sardar was the editor o
FUTURES
when it published the article ‘Science for the post-normal age’ presently the most cited paper of the journal. A recent review of academic literature conducted on the Web of Science and encompassing the topics of Futures studies, Foresight, Forecasting and Anticipation Practice identifies the same paper as "the all-time publication that received the highest number of citations".


Content

"At birth Post-normal science was conceived as an inclusive set of robust insights more than as an exclusive fully structured theory or field of practice".Funtowicz, S., 2016, personal correspondence. Some of the ideas underpinning PNS can already be found in a work published in 1983 and entitled "Three types of risk assessment: a methodological analysis" Funtowicz, S. O. and Ravetz, J. R. (1985), Three types of risk assessment: a methodological analysis, in C. Whipple and V. T. Covello (Eds), Risk Analysis in the Private Sector, pp 217-232 (Plenum, New York). This and subsequent works show that PNS concentrates on few aspects of the complex relation between science and policy: the communication of uncertainty, the assessment of quality, and the justification and practice of the extended peer communities. Coming to the PNS diagram (figure above) the horizontal axis represents ‘Systems Uncertainties’ and the vertical one ‘Decision Stakes’. The three quadrants identify Applied Science, Professional Consultancy, and Post-Normal Science. Different standards of quality and styles of analysis are appropriate to different regions in the diagram, i.e. post-normal science does not claim relevance and cogency on all of science's application but only on those defined by the PNS's mantram with a fourfold challenge: ‘facts uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent’. For applied research science's own peer quality control system will suffice (or so was assumed at the moment PNS was formulated in the early nineties), while professional consultancy was considered appropriate for these settings which cannot be ‘peer-reviewed’, and where the skills and the tacit knowledge of a practitioner are needed at the forefront, e.g. in a surgery room, or in a house on fire. Here a surgeon or a firefighter takes a difficult technical decision based on her or his training and appreciation of the situation (the Greek concept of ‘
Metis Metis or Métis may refer to: Ethnic groups * Métis, recognized Indigenous communities in Canada and America whose distinct culture and language emerged after early intermarriage between First Nations peoples and early European settlers, prima ...
’).


Complexity

There are important linkages between PNS and complexity science,Rees, M., 2017, Black holes are simpler than forests and science has its limits
AEON, 1 December
e.g. system ecology ( C. S. Holling) and hierarchy theory (
Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...
). In PNS, complexity is respected through its recognition of a multiplicity of legitimate perspectives on any issue; and reflexivity is realised through the extension of accepted ‘facts’ beyond the supposedly objective productions of traditional research. Also, the new participants in the process are not treated as passive learners at the feet of the experts, being coercively convinced through scientific demonstration. Rather, they will form an ‘extended peer community’, sharing the work of quality assurance of the scientific inputs to the process, and arriving at a resolution of issues through debate and dialogue. The necessity to embrace complexity in a post-normal perspective to understand and face
zoonoses A zoonosis (; plural zoonoses) or zoonotic disease is an infectious disease of humans caused by a pathogen (an infectious agent, such as a bacterium, virus, parasite or prion) that has jumped from a non-human (usually a vertebrate) to a human. ...
is argumented by David Waltner-Toews.


Extended peer community

In PNS extended peer communities are spaces where perspectives, values, styles of knowing and power differentials are expressed in a context of inequalities and conflict. Resolutions, compromises and knowledge co-production are contingent and not necessarily achievable.


Applications

Beside its dominating influence in the literature on 'futures',Thomas Gauthier, Sylvaine Mercuri Chapuis, 2018, An Investigation of Futures Studies Scholarly Literature, In: Poli R. (eds) Handbook of Anticipation. Springer, Cham PNS is considered to have influenced the ecological ‘conservation versus preservation debate’, especially via its reading by American pragmatis
Bryan G. Norton
According to Jozef Keulartz the PNS concept of "extended peer community" influenced how Norton's developed his 'convergence hypothesis'. The hypothesis posits that ecologists of different orientation will converge once they start thinking 'as a mountain', or as a planet. For Norton this will be achieved via deliberative democracy, which will pragmatically overcome the black and white divide between conservationists and preservationists. More recently it has been argued that conservation science, embedded as it is in a multi-layered governance structures of policy-makers, practitioners, and stakeholders, is itself an 'extended peer community', and as a result conservation has always been ‘post-normal’. Other authors attribute to PNS the role of having stimulated the take up of transdisciplinary methodological frameworks, reliant on the social constructivist perspective embedded in PNS. Today post-normal science is intended as applicable to most instances where the use of evidence is contested due to different norms and values. Typical instances are in the use of
evidence based policy Evidence-based policy is an idea in public policy proposing that policy decisions should be based on, or informed by, rigorously established objective evidence. The implied contrast is with policymaking based on ideology, 'common sense,' anecdo ...
and in
evaluation Evaluation is a systematic determination and assessment of a subject's merit, worth and significance, using criteria governed by a set of standards. It can assist an organization, program, design, project or any other intervention or initiative ...
. As summarized in a recent work "the ideas and concepts of post normal science bring about the emergence of new problem solving strategies in which the role of science is appreciated in its full context of the complexity and the uncertainty of natural systems and the relevance of human commitments and values." For Peter Gluckman (2014), chief science advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand, post-normal science approaches are today appropriate for a host of problems including "eradication of exogenous pests offshore oil prospecting, legalization of recreational psychotropic drugs, water quality, family violence, obesity, teenage morbidity and suicide, the ageing population, the prioritization of early-childhood education, reduction of agricultural greenhouse gases, and balancing economic growth and environmental sustainability". Recent reviews of the history and evolution of PNS, its definitions, conceptualizations, and uses can be found in Turnpenny et al., 2010, and in The Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics (Nature and Society).Strand, R., 2017, Post normal Science, The Routledge Handbook of Ecological Economics (Nature and Society) Edited by Clive L. Spash, p. 288-297. There has been recently an increased reference to post-normal science, e.g. in
Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...
and related journals.


Criticism

A criticism of post-normal science is offered by Weingart (1997) for whom post-normal science does not introduce a new epistemology but retraces earlier debates linked to the so-called "finalization thesis". For Jörg Friedrichs – comparing the issues of climate change and peak energy – an extension of the peer community has taken place in the climate science community, transforming climate scientists into ‘stealth advocates’,R. A. Pielke, Jr, The Honest Broker. Cambridge University Press, 2007. while scientists working on energy security – without PNS, would still maintain their credentials of neutrality and objectivity. Another criticism is that the extended peer community's use undermines the
scientific method The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific m ...
's use of empiricism and that its goal would be better addressed by providing greater science education.


The crisis of science

It has been argued that post-normal science scholars have been prescient in anticipating the present crisis in science's quality control and reproducibility. A group of scholars of post-normal science orientation has published in 2016 a volume on the topic,Benessia, A., Funtowicz, S., Giampietro, M., Guimarães Pereira, A., Ravetz, J., Saltelli, A., Strand, R., van der Sluijs, J., 2016. The Rightful Place of Science: Science on the Verge. The Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. discussing ''inter alia'' what this community perceive as the root causes of the present
science's crisis The replication crisis (also called the replicability crisis and the reproducibility crisis) is an ongoing methodological crisis in which the results of many scientific studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce. Because the reproducibi ...
.Ravetz, J., 2016
How should we treat science's growing pains? The Guardian, 8 June 2016


Quantitative approaches

Among the quantitative styles of analysis which make reference to post-normal science one can mention
NUSAP NUSAP is a notational system for the management and communication of uncertainty in science for policy, based on five categories for characterizing any quantitative statement: Numeral, Unit, Spread, Assessment and Pedigree. NUSAP was introduced by S ...
for numerical information,
sensitivity auditing Sensitivity auditing is an extension of sensitivity analysis for use in policy-relevant modelling studies. Its use is recommended - e.g. in the European Commission Impact assessment guidelines and by the European Science Academies- when a sensitivit ...
for indicators and mathematical modelling,
Quantitative storytelling Quantitative storytelling (QST) is a systematic approach used to explore the multiplicity of frames potentially legitimate in a scientific study or controversy. iampietro, M., Aspinall, R. J., Ramos-Martin, J. and Bukkens, S. G. F. (2014) Resource ...
for exploring multiple frames in a quantitative analysis, and MUSIASEM in the field of social metabolism. A work where these approaches are suggested for sustainability is in.


Mathematical modelling

In relation to mathematical modelling post-normal science suggests a participatory approach, whereby ‘models to predict and control the future’ are replaced by ‘models to map our ignorance about the future’, in the process exploring and revealing the metaphors embedded in the model. PNS is also known for its definition of garbage in, garbage out (GIGO): in modelling GIGO occurs when the uncertainties in the inputs must be suppressed, lest the outputs become completely indeterminate. In a comment published in Nature 22 scholars take COVID-19 as the occasion for suggesting five ways to make models serve society better. The piece notes "how the operation of science changes when questions of urgency, stakes, values and uncertainty collide — in the ‘post-normal’ regime".


COVID-19

On March 25, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of scholars of post-normal orientation published on the blog section of the STEPS Centre (for Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) at the University of Sussex. The piece Postnormal pandemics: Why COVID-19 requires a new approach to science, guest post on STEPS by David Waltner-Toews, Annibale Biggeri, Bruna De Marchi, Silvio Funtowicz, Mario Giampietro, Martin O’Connor, Jerome R. Ravetz, Andrea Saltelli and Jeroen P. van der Sluijs.
/ref> argues that the COVID-19 emergency has all the elements of a post-normal science context, and notes that "this pandemic offers society an occasion to open a fresh discussion on whether we now need to learn how to do science in a different way".


Special issues

The journa
''FUTURES''
devoted several specials issues to post-normal science. * The first was i
1999
and included two editorial pieces, from
Jerome Ravetz Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author (with Silvio Funtowicz) of the NUSAP ...
and
Silvio Funtowicz Silvio O. Funtowicz (born 1946) is a philosopher of science active in the field of science and technology studies. He created the NUSAP, a notational system for characterising uncertainty and quality in quantitative expressions, and together with ...

Post-Normal Science—an insight now maturing
and from
Jerome Ravetz Jerome (Jerry) Ravetz is a philosopher of science. He is best known for his books analysing scientific knowledge from a social and ethical perspective, focussing on issues of quality. He is the co-author (with Silvio Funtowicz) of the NUSAP ...

What is Post-Normal Science
* The second special issue, edited by
Merryl Wyn Davies Merryl Wyn Davies (23 June 1948 – 1 February 2021) was a Welsh people, Welsh Muslim scholar, writer and broadcaster who specialised in Islam, and the co-author of books and articles with Ziauddin Sardar. An exponent of Islamic anthropology, she ...
, was entitled "Post normal times" in 2011.Davies, M.W., Editor, 2011, Special Issue: Postnormal Times Futures, Volume 43, Issue 2, Pages 135-228 (March 2011). http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00163287/43/2 This was a selection of papers from the symposium "Post Normal Science – perspectives & prospectives 26-27th June 2009, Oxford." A summary of the abstracts can be found on th
NUSAP net
* The third special issue on post-normal science was in 2017. This special issue contains a selection of papers discussed at the
University of Bergen The University of Bergen ( no, Universitetet i Bergen, ) is a research-intensive state university located in Bergen, Norway. As of 2019, the university has over 4,000 employees and 18,000 students. It was established by an act of parliament in 194 ...
's Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities between 2014 and 2016. The issue includes also two extended commentaries on the present crisis in science and the post-fact/post-truth discourse, one from Europe and one from Japan. Another special issue on post-normal science was published on the journal ''
Science, Technology, & Human Values ''Science, Technology, & Human Values'' (''ST&HV'') is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research on the relationship of science and technology with society. The journal's editor-in-chief is Edward J. Hackett ( Arizona State University ...
'' i
May 2011


References


Bibliography

* * *Funtowicz, S.O. and J.R. Ravetz (1990). ''
Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy ''Uncertainty and Quality in Science for Policy'' is a 1990 book by Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, in which the authors explain the notational system NUSAP (numeral, unit, spread, assessment, pedigree) and applies it to several examples from t ...
''. Kluwer Academic Publishers, the Netherlands. *


External links


''Post-Normal Times''NUSAP.netIntroductory lecture to Post Normal Science
(requires Internet Explorer)

on
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
14 March 2007
Article
on
The Conversation (website) ''The Conversation'' is a network of not-for-profit media outlets publishing news stories and research reports online, with accompanying expert opinion and analysis. Articles are written by academics and researchers under a free Creative Co ...
26 September 2016
More articles on PNSAbout MUSIASEM

Special issue on Futures
*Centre for Postnormal Policy and Futures Studies, East West University (http://eastwestaffairs.org/cppfs/) {{DEFAULTSORT:Post-Normal Science Scientific method Philosophy of science Science and technology studies